The geomembrane industry has been buzzing lately with a new interest in geomembrane covers which are left uncovered. It’s advantageous in some situations to leave a rain-shedding cover, over a closed waste or another site, uncovered, at least for some extended period of time. This allows the owner/engineers to perform various in-situ treatment of the underlying material, make modifications to the geomembrane cover, and/or leave the site available for new or anticipated technological advances for long-term site management.

Some of the harshest environs in the world are in extreme cold applications. Wastewater operations must be designed with materials and features which ensure those successes. Let’s take a look at one such installation, the 6-acre geomembrane lined wastewater impoundment at the Lowell Point wastewater treatment plant in Seward, Alaska. The reinforced ethylene copolymer has been in service at the facility for over a quarter of a century. Here are five features of the original site design, product selection, and installation, which were essential to its success and longevity.

When Fairway Energy Partners needed to expand its underground crude oil storage capacity at a facility in Houston, it turned to XR-5 geomembranes. The membrane liners were an ideal solution for containing brine and crude oil on the massive project.

In April 2016, I wrote about what I learned watching a geomembrane installation at the World’s Fair Park Lake in Knoxville, Tennessee. Those lessons were fundamental, such as the importance of a stable and well-prepared subgrade, why you should minimize field seams and the ability to get a flexible geomembrane to fit a serpentine basin. Now, it is over 18 months later and I checked on the working installation and can offer five observations:

Design and industrial engineers rely on geomembranes to withstand the harshest conditions in a broad range of applications.  They must be made of durable and chemically resistant materials to be able to optimally function as pond liners, floating covers, wastewater baffles and secondary containment—or to be used in other applications that require a long-lasting and impenetrable, yet flexible barrier.

One of the toughest measures of the stability for a geomembrane seam is Dead Load Testing, which is found in the Standard Test Methods for Coated Fabrics (ASTM D751 Section 80-83).This ASTM standard applies to coated fabrics only, not reinforced laminates, extruded, or blown film geomembranes. Why is this testing only applicable to coated fabrics? The answer is simple: only a heavily reinforced material will perform in a dead load situation.

Last week, I spent part of a couple of days watching an XR-5 liner being installed in an existing, drained pond in Knoxville, Tennessee. Aside from beautiful weather in a beautiful part of the county, it was very interesting to note certain details that you don’t always think about that make or break a successful installation.